Ahh the good old days of multiprotocol Trillian rather than adware.
ICQ will stop working from June 26
421–430 of 776 posts
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…
The Internet being an opt-in thing that you'd consciously connect to at a set our of the day, not something that would reach out to you and notify you about all kinds of things at random times, was definitely a different feeling. Back then, it felt like a parallel world; now it's more like an overlay on this one.
I guess AI is the next thing that's still opt-in now, will be opt-out tomorrow and then no-escape. It would be interesting to read a nostalgic thread from 2070...
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for me but the day I will really cry a little will be when mIRC dies. It was my introduction to instant effortless free worldwide communication. Of course I haven't used it for decades but it calms me that it is still very alive.
mIRC has the same chance of dying as Irssi. As in none.
I remember choosing irrsi over bitchx because the latter was "too complicated" for me at the time.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#424489151 here. I even got a job offer from ICQ back in the day. One of the perks they offered was a small ICQ number ending in zeros. I didn't take the job offer because I was in high school, though, and wasn't even looking for a job. It's unclear whether they knew that. I'd written some companion program and put it on the internet and they'd found it and were impressed. :)
Hah, cool. I had a similar experience with Xoom.com (the website hosting company). They sent me a job application because I had been volunteering in their forums for a while, assisting people with developing websites.
I still remember going into my parents room to tell them I'm applying for a job and they had no idea what I was talking about. I submitted the application, and the Xoom staff had a good chuckle as they had no idea I was ~14 at the time.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
383105. I can remember an unused IM account from a lifetime ago but not a single ffmpeg flag.
I don't remember my ICQ number but I can remember a dozen F2P MMOs from the early / mid-2000s and most of my usernames but I need to look up `tar -xvzf` every time even with an awareness of the Arnold Schwarzenegger meme. The brain remembers what it wants to remember.
Had to look up the meme, as I couldn't remember it. I think gentoo or slackware made me remeber -xvzf
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#426Anybody remember Odigo?
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the music/sound when ICQ used to load up. The logo was brilliant. Nostalgia. Circa 1999-2001 when I used it heavily. Best part though: finding strangers and becoming online friends with many of them (without worrying about scams etc).
I don't know if it's nostalgia or silliness, but I've at various times reused the ICQ uh-oh audio as irssi hilight/putty audio bell sound, SMS signal and Discord voice channel join sound over the years. Usually I find it entertaining the first two or three times and then it acts as a very large stressor.
Me too, it's been my phone's notification sound for about 20 years now
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#428I don't even remember what my ICQ number was. It was the first social network I joined.
why should ICQ be a social network?
What qualities do you consider unique to a "social network" system (beyond its own self-marketing or the time-period in which it arose) that aren't qualities already present in ICQ, E-mail, IRC, newsgroups, etc?
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#429This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…
4125222 I still remember it but not the pass
156876
Just logged in, there's nothing left.
I remember being so annoyed I hadn't signed up a few weeks earlier and gotten a 5-digit instead.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…
You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing. You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform. Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Tel…
Element is where it's at.